A Wish for Death
by Nianeika
Summary: Trowa is visiting a close friend in a cemetery and debating on whether or not he deserves the escape of death


A Wish For Death.  
  
Warnings: implied 3+4 (blink and u'll miss it!), angst, death  
  
Disclaimer: don't own it.  
  
Archive: www.personalescapes.com/gundam/gw_fs.html  
  
http://zizania.org/meghan, if you want me, ask first^_~  
  
Feedback: the_spirit_of_epyon@hotmail.com and please review!^_^  
  
It was in the middle of a storm that Trowa Barton decided to go to the cemetery. Most people would think it strange that someone would choose the worst weather imaginable to visit a friend in a graveyard, but to Trowa it was the only time he dared venture out into the open. He walked through the many tombstones, his grey coat and the streaming rain making it almost impossible to see him, his walk was deliberate and he kept his eyes straight ahead, barely looking where he was going, not that it mattered. He could never get lost here. Not in a million years. This cemetery was the biggest in seven towns, the part he was walking through reserved for the rich and high influenced people. He stopped in front of an elaborate monument, obviously worth a fortune, but the person the monument stood for was worth a thousand of them, and more. Trowa bent his head and studied the engraving he knew so well, the engraving that would be etched in his memory for the time of a Phoenix's lifespan, and a Phoenix lives forever. It read:  
  
Quatre Raberba Winner  
  
AC.180 - AC.198  
  
Killed in action, fighting bravely for peace  
  
Loving brother, loving son, the greatest of friends  
  
'He will be forever missed'  
  
The Silent Bringer knelt at the foot of Quatre's final resting place, and looked around him. The friends and family of the blonde gundam pilot had buried him within the sloping branches of a beautiful willow tree, with sweeping green grass facing away from the tomb. The beauty of the place was appropriate for this young Arabian boy. Quatre always did love the earth, thought Trowa, where better to lay him down in death than among the beauty he so loved in life.  
  
Trowa was glad of the rain, it helped him convince himself that it was raindrops trailing their way down his face, not tears for his lost friend. He felt the sharp pain of heartache hit him worse than ever, but he was used to it now. He had felt it ever since he heard Quatre's scream of death, Quatre's death at the hands of Trowa.  
  
He closed his eyes, running that day through his head once more, feeling the pain and welcoming it. The pain was his punishment, his penalty for robbing such a wonderful person of his life. And once again he heard the regret and heartache in Quatre's voice as he had felt his life drain away, and the disbelief that Trowa had been the one to end his existence upon the earth Trowa started the memory again. The killing, the death of an innocent. For that's what Quatre was…an innocent. He may have been a gundam pilot and killed just as many as Heero or himself, but he had never enjoyed it, he had been fighting for his family, for all the families that needed saving. It was honorable, and no matter how many had died, Quatre had never lost his humanity. But in the end, he too had lost his life, but not to the enemy. He remembered every detail, he would remember it for the rest of his life.  
  
The pilots had been attacking the biggest OZ base in operation at that time. The enemy had no mobile dolls, but they did have specially upgraded Leos and Aries, each were more mobile, more powerful, and proved more than a challenge for the Gundams. The battle began, before long most of the pilots were in trouble, especially Quatre. His com link was down, and his fuel almost gone. When it ran out and Sandrock went down, Quatre, not wanting to abandon his friends, leapt out and took over an enemy Leo, thinking he could inform the others of his sudden suit change before they attacked him, mistaking him for the enemy.  
  
But upon attempting to change the Leo's frequency he discovered it had a major flaw. The flaw being it had been damaged and it wasn't working. It was then Trowa had seen him. He had not seen Quatre. All he saw was an enemy suit that needed to be destroyed. He had manoeuvred his gundam Heavyarms towards the Leo, he pressed the button that sprang the blade out of his arm and struck the suit. Just as he did Quatre got the link to work, so Trowa heard Quatre's death scream. Trowa had frozen. It sounded like Quatre, but it couldn't be. Quatre was in his gundam, wasn't he? Trowa swung around, scanning the battlefield for the sight of Sandrock up and fighting with its pilot inside, safe and not lying dead in the not yet exploded Leo at his feet.  
  
Trowa felt his blood go cold, he had found Sandrock; it was lying on the ground behind one of the communication buildings of the base. He could see the door of it was open, and Quatre did not appear to be in it. He stooped his gundam over the Leo, still miraculously intact, and jumped out, running over to the suit. The pilots cockpit had been torn open. It was there that he found the mangled body of his friend. Blood was running through his hair, and his broken body an obvious sign that he no longer lived. But Trowa wouldn't believe it, he tried every form of resuscitation he knew, until finally, exhausted, he was forced to face the truth. The pilot of Gundam Sandrock, the Noble in the Desert, the blonde boy full of morals and a love for life and beauty of every kind, was dead. And nothing was bringing him back. Trowa sank to the ground and cradled Quatre's body in his arms, and sat there, an endless supply of tears running down his face, until the others, concerned about where he and Quatre were, found them.  
  
Duo had been the first to find them, when he saw Quatre, his eyes filled with tears and he shook his head in disbelief. Eventually the others showed up, all saddened at the death of one of their own. Heero was the first to realize the strange fact that Quatre had died when his gundam was half a mile away. He turned to Trowa.  
  
"Trowa, how did he die?" Trowa looked at him, his eyes void of all feeling, his voice unemotional, the constant stream of tears the only thing that betrayed what he was feeling.  
  
"I killed him."  
  
That was all Trowa said, and all Trowa would say for the next three days until the funeral. After a while the others learned the truth about what had happened, but had not been able to convince Trowa that it was not his fault Quatre was dead. The night after Quatre's funeral Trowa had flown to the colonies and turned in his gundam to the scientists, telling them to find a new pilot for it, he was done.  
  
When he returned to earth he walked to the cliffs he and Quatre had once walked over. Stopping at the edge, he looked into the raging waters below and contemplated suicide. It would bring an end to this heart-wrenching pain that would not leave him. But as he watched the waves break over the rocks 200ft under him, he had shaken his head. He would stay alive and bear it, it would be his punishment, he would carry the pain and guilt and sorrow until his natural death.  
  
And on this day, as he walked away from Quatre's grave, he wished for death, he knew he would wish for it so many more times before God took pity on him and let him leave his mortal place on earth. Making his way back through the cemetery in the rain, he sighed.  
  
Death had never seemed so far away.  
  
  
  
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